It is very difficult to define where victory in this game of controversy lies. It depends to some extent, like victory in any other game, upon fatigue, or lack of attention. I had a controversy in the "Times Literary Supplement" many years ago about the Battle of Evesham with another person who apparently knew less about it than I did. After the special pleading and nonsense had gone on through five or six moves I quoted Matthew Paris. My opponent (who wore a mask and a long cloak) came in with a heavy blow, showing that Matthew Paris was dead when the Battle of Evesham was fought. Now, the counter-blow to this was as easy as falling off a log. Your spectator (for whose benefit these newspaper duels are fought) would naturally say, "This is final!" What he did not know was that there is a continuation of Matthew Paris, commonly called under the same name, which does deal with the Battle of Evesham. All I had to do was to write another letter (which I am sure the courteous Editor would have printed, seeing that he got all this for nothing), pointing out with the utmost good feeling, tact, etc., that my opponent was swindling, and, by using a false technical term, deceiving the populace. "Matthew Paris" (I should have said) "is a conventional term for the original chronicle and its continuation as a whole, and it is 'a poor trick of controversy'" (I love that phrase; it is one of the seasoned and rooted phrases) "to confuse the general reader with false references." Did I make such a reply? Did I write that letter to the "Times Literary Supplement"? Not I! I was smitten with an intense desire to go to Belgium (it was before the war) and study the battlefield of Ramillies, where is sold the worst liquor in the world; and off I went, leaving my opponent the proud and sole victor on that field. I wish to-day I knew who he was. To slay or to be slain by a hooded antagonist is poor fun: it ought to be part of the rules of the theatre for the man to pull off the hood at the end, either from his own glazing eyes or from those of his prostrate victim, whereupon the ladies would recognise to their amazement the features of Sir Guy de Beaurivage or Mr. Hulp, or whoever it might be, and the tourney would end with a feast to the hero after the sentimental burial of the dead.
Which reminds me of what a shame it is that so much controversy should be anonymous. It was never meant to be so. After all, controversy is conducted for the amusement of the onlookers as well as for, and more than for, the exercise and moral health of the principals, and there is not much fun in an anonymous combat where, for all you know, the opposing parties may really be one and the same person.
Many a case have I known in London journalism where, as a matter of fact, the opposing parties were one and the same person. There was a man who wrote years ago, during the Boer War, to a pro-Boer daily paper which he disliked, complaining of the way in which the teeth of animalculæ gnawed into the copper sheathing-plates of ships in the South Seas, and ruined them. Then he wrote a letter from another place in another false name to the same paper, saying that the first letter was written by an ignoramus, and describing how the animalculæ should be dealt with. There was a tremendous fight lasting for weeks, and it ended, I remember, by a beautiful description of the great ships built at Solothurn in Switzerland and there launched upon the mighty deep. Even then the editor did not smell a rat. Why should he? Editors cannot always know everything. And he thought (did this editor) that Switzerland lay upon the sea. It was necessary, therefore, for the public to break the ring and burst up the show: which they did, amidst great laughter.
I know another case where a man, being the literary editor of a great daily paper, reviewed one of his own books with the utmost virulence—but anonymously. He showed in this review a very profound knowledge of the tricks lying behind the production of the book and of the charlatanism of it. Then did he, in his own name, write a dignified reply, and there was quite a little commotion.
The reviewer wrote back adding further charges, which were demonstrably true. The author wrote once more saying his dignity forbade his continuing the quarrel, and the next day both of them counted as one in a meaningless division of the House of Commons.
To this day I am never quite certain that the more violent leaders I read in opposing papers are not often written by the same man; at any rate, they are often written in exactly the same style, with the notable exception of one daily paper which, as the atheist said of his unbaptised child, "shall be nameless." All the others (except this notable one) have their leaders written in precisely the same manner. That is what makes me think that they are done for the most part by one man—and what an output he must have! And what a lot of money he must earn!—even at two guineas a thousand, the price of prose in these most happy years of peace which have seen the birth of a new Europe and the dawn of The Day of Justice final and secure.
ON INACCURACY
The other day I was writing in other fields than these, ploughing another land (to which, for the honour I bear it, I again give no name), and I had occasion to speak about the Nereids who swim about in the sea. I very pompously announced their appearance in the Sixteenth Book of the Iliad. I should have said the Eighteenth Book.